Tag Archives: spring

Spring has arrived in the Chicago region—at last, at last! The savannas and prairies are awash in color and motion. Warblers and butterflies everywhere you look…

…garter snakes sashaying out in the bright light to sun themselves…

…and of course the wildflowers, in all their amazing complexity.

My Tuesday morning prairie team is busy updating our plant inventory, a daunting task that has run into its second season. This spring, we are looking for a hundred or so plants out of the 500 from the inventory that we couldn’t find in 2017. The last complete prairie inventory was wrapped up in 2005, so we need a check-in on what’s still here, and what has disappeared or moved into the prairie. Knowing the plants we have will help us make better decisions on how to care for the site.

This is a high-quality planted 100-acre prairie, wetland, and savanna, which is almost in its sixth decade. Some call it the fourth oldest planted prairie in North America! So we feel the heavy weight of responsibility to get our numbers right.

Its a prairie with some beautiful blooms—and some quirky ones as well. This week, our “oohs” and “ahhs” are for common valerian (Valeriana edulis var. ciliata), a high-quality—and despite its name—uncommon prairie plant. Flora of the Chicago Region gives it the highest possible plant score — a perfect “C” value of “10.”

We’ve been hot on the trail of three more common but elusive plants that we’d missed in the spring of 2017: skunk cabbage, marsh marigold, and rue anemone. Some adventurous members of the team discovered the skunk cabbage in April, poking through the muck in a deep gully. Now, two weeks later, it is much easier to see.

…turned out to be a single plant, hiding among some fig buttercup (Ficaria verna) a pernicious, non-native invasive wetland species. We’ll remove the fig buttercup so it doesn’t spread across the waterway.

The missing rue anemone went from invisible to visible last week after storms moved through the area and greened up the savanna. Such a delicate wildflower! Easy to miss unless you find a large colony.

Looking for specific plants as we’re doing now results in some serendipity. Our plant inventory team found harbinger of spring for the first time in our site’s history while looking for the marsh marigold. A new species for our site —and so tiny! Who knows how long we’ve overlooked it here.

In addition to the inventory, most of us are weeding garlic mustard, a persistent invasive plant that infests disturbed areas around the prairie. One of the perks of weeding is we make other discoveries, such as wild ginger blooms. You might flip hundreds of wild ginger plant leaves over before you find the first flower. Pretty good occupation for a warm and windy afternoon, isn’t it?

The rains also prompted large-flowered trillium to open. These won’t last long.

Updating a plant inventory plus a little judicious garlic mustard weeding will teach you how little you know about what is happening in your little corner of the plant world. I see plants that look familiar, but their name eludes me. It takes numerous trips through my favorite plant ID guides to get reacquainted. I also look in vain for old favorites which seem to have disappeared. (Where, oh where, is our birdfoot violet?)

Spring keeps you on your toes. It reminds you to be amazed. It constantly astonishes you with its sleight of hand; prolifically giving new species and flagrantly taking them away. And as always, there are a few surprises.

Ah. The “elusive, rare” red tulip! Where did that come from? Huh.

Just when you think you know a flower, it turns up a a little different color, or gives you a new perspective on its life cycle. To see the wood betony at this stage always throws those new to the prairie for a loop. Almost ferny, isn’t it?

Barely a hint now of what it will be when it grows up. Same for the prairie dock, tiny fuzzy leaves lifting above the ashes of the burn.

Or the hepatica, most of its petal-like sepals gone, but the green bracts now visible. Looks like a different plant than when it was in full bloom.

Pasque flower is now past bloom. As stewards, we turn our thoughts toward the first seed collection of the season and propagation for the next year. If a species is gone, or seems to be dwindling, we’ll consider replanting to maintain the diversity of the prairie.

We tally up the numbers, check off plant species. Update scientific names which have changed. But no matter how the spreadsheets read, we know one thing for certain.

What a glorious time of year it is! Spring on the prairie is worth the wait.

Pause: a “temporary stop” according to the Merriam Webster Dictionary. The Oxford Dictionary defines “pause” as an interruption. Pause seems like a good word to describe spring on the prairie this past week. Stopped. Interrupted. Although we know this spring pause is temporary in the Chicago region, some of us are feeling cranky about it.

Spring, with all its flirtatious promises, has seemingly gone AWOL. The surge and bloom of wildflowers screeched to a halt. And just when spring was beginning to look like it was underway, right? All those tiny green wildflower leaves!

The sandhill cranes migrating north. The chorus frogs calling. Just days ago. Such a big push spring made; such clamor and green and even some blooms! And now, sunshine and blue skies have regressed to the soft patter of snowflakes and grayest gloom.

The signature song from the Disney movie “Frozen” plays relentlessly in my head (“Let the storm rage on! The cold never bothered me anyway!”) But it’s difficult to let go of my impatience for the new season to arrive.

You can spend your life wanting whatever is just out of reach, or wish for things over which you have no control. Or you can appreciate the joy of what is right in front of you and already yours. Contentment can be hard-won at this time of year. But I know what I need to do.

I quit grumbling and go for hike on the prairie.

Flakes sift into my hair; melt on my face. As I hike, the snowflakes turn into tiny icy balls. Graupel. Small white pellets of supercooled raindrops. We’ve had a lot of it this past month. The perfect transitional precipitation—not quite rain, hail,or snow. Graupel is water that just can’t make up its mind. Sort of like spring.

Under snow and ice, the familiar prairie, still unburned, takes on a transitional look of its own.

The grasses and forbs wear their winter colors, stripped to the architecture of stems and seeds. But the snow caught in their scaffolding seems a foreshadowing of the flowers to come.

The red-winged blackbirds remind me that it’s April, and not winter.

The air smells of mud, snow, and decay. Sharp. Cold and invigorating.

My head clears as I breathe in the icy air. During this past week, I’ve sampled some of the pleasures of winter again: hot drinks, a warm afghan, and a big stack of library books. Mulled over seed catalogs, but not felt any urgency to get the garden ready. There’s a sense that everything can wait.

It’s been restful, this breath of winter. This pause.

For another day or two, I’ll try and savor the stillness that a “pause” brings. Leave my garden tools in the shed. Put some whipped cream on my hot chocolate. Enjoy these last days of snow and cold.

You heard that right. Enjoy.

The weather forecast calls for temperatures in the seventies later this week.

I’m looking forward to the warmer days of spring. You too?

I’ll believe it when it happens.

Until then, I’ll try to appreciate the pause.

********

William Shakespeare (1564-1616), whose quote opens this blog post, was a British playwright, actor, and poet. He’s considered the world’s greatest dramatist. Few of us will make it through life without having read a play or watched a performance written by Shakespeare. Many of his phrases have fallen into common use such as “green with envy,” or “pure as the driven snow.” Check out this fun article from Mental Floss for more: 21 Phrases You Use Without Realizing You’re Quoting Shakespeare.

The beetle seems minuscule until a spider wanders into the scene. The line it throws is deceptively fragile looking. Yet, it’s strong enough to capture supper.

There is life high above, in the flight of a blue heron scared up from the fen.

While below, tossed carelessly in the grasses, are souvenirs of death.

Life cut short.

Beauty and terror co-exist, side-by-side.

But the stars still come out –shooting stars! Make a wish.

Life, death, rebirth. It’s all here…

…at the end of April on the prairie.

***

The opening quote is from the poet (Frederic) Ogden Nash (1902-71) and his poem, “Always Marry an April Girl.” Nash is known for his humorous rhyming verse, and his nonsensical words. An example: “If called by a panther/don’t anther.”

“Every morning I wakened with a fresh consciousness that winter was over. There was only—spring itself; the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it everywhere: in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the pale sunshine, and in the warm, high wind—rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive and playful like a big puppy that pawed you and then lay down to be petted. If I had been tossed down blindfold on that red prairie, I should have known that it was spring.” –Willa Cather
***

Clouds scud across the February skies. The prairie wind howls. The gray days seem endless.

But wait! Listen closely. There’s a whisper of spring.

Do you hear the crackle of ice melt?

Do you see the skunk cabbage, bruised by the cold? It burns through the leaves and unfurls its rubbery leaves.

Most of the prairie wildflower seeds have vanished. Emptied, the polished shells of milkweed pods grow brittle and loose.

A few of the less delectable wildflower seeds –like carrion flower–hang on, withered and waiting.

Indian grass and other prairie grasses are weather bleached to colorless ghosts.

Still, if you look closely, big bluestem leaves are etched with reds, pinks, chocolates, and yellows.

Sumac holds its flaming scarlet candles aloft…

…while switchgrass throws a party, complete with confetti and streamers.

Near my backyard prairie patch, black-capped chickadees and a cardinal cautiously crunch seeds at the feeder. Startled by a sound, they fly up as one into the maple. There, they tentatively practice their spring mating songs.

Warmer weather is just around the corner.

Can you catch a whisper of spring? Do you see the signs? Look. Listen. We’re almost there.

***

Willa Cather (1873-1947), whose quote from My Antonia opens this essay, was a Pulitzer Prize winning writer whose books about the Great Plains immortalized prairie for her readers. She hated her birth name, which was Wilella, and she called herself Willie or William. A graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Cather spent most of her adult life in New York City, where she drew on her childhood memories of Nebraska to write stories of the prairie. She was elected a Fellow of the American Arts and Sciences in 1943, although critics dismissed much of her later writing as nostalgic and out of touch with the times. Cather’s best know trilogy of novels, Oh Pioneers! (1913), The Song of the Lark (1915), and My Antonia (1918), are classics on the prairie landscape and the immigrants who lived there.

“It is easy to underestimate the power of a long-term association with the land, not just with a specific spot but with the span of it in memory and imagination, how it fills, for example, one’s dreams…”–Barry Lopez

****

“There’s nothing much happening on the prairie now…right?” a long-time nature lover asked me recently. Here is what I want him to know.

To develop a relationship with a prairie, you will want to experience the spring burn.

Learn the names of the summer wildflowers.

Marvel at the fall colors.

But don’t forget hiking the winter prairie, no matter how cold and gray the days may be. Because part of any good relationship is simply showing up.

The joys of a winter hike include the thimbleweed’s soft cloud-drifts of seeds. Like Q-tips.

Or, the way prairie dock’s dotted Swiss leaves, brittle with cold and age, become a vessel for snow and a window into something more.

Don’t miss the deep grooves, sharp spikes, and elegant curves of rattlesnake master leaves, swirling in and out of focus in the grasses. How can a plant be so forbidding–yet so graceful?

In winter, you’re aware of the contrasts of dark and light; of beaded pods and slender stems.

The goldenrod rosette galls are as pretty as any blooms the summer offers.

The colors of the end-of-January prairie, which splatter across the landscape like a Jackson Pollock painting, are more subtle than the vivid hues of July. But no less striking, in their own way. The winter prairie whispers color, instead of shouting it.

On your hike, you may bump up against signs of life, like this praying mantis egg case.

Or be dazzled by the diminutive drifts of snow crystals, each bit of ice a work of art.

All of the flowers –and most of the seedheads–are gone. Many of the birds have flown south. Hibernating mammals sleep away the cold. But as life on the stripped-down prairie slows…

…there is still much to see and to learn. And, isn’t slowing down and waiting an important part of any relationship?

Yes, there is a lot happening on the winter prairie right now. But only for those who take time to look.

Why not go for a hike and see?

***

Barry Lopez (1945-), whose quote begins this essay, won the National Book Award for his nonfiction book, Arctic Dreams.His“Of Wolves and Men” won the John Burroughs Nature Writing Medal (1978). Lopez graduated from Notre Dame University, and is currently Visiting Distinguished Scholar at Texas Tech University. He has been called “the nation’s premier nature writer” by the San Francisco Chronicle, and writes compellingly about the relationship of people and cultures to landscape. Another memorable line from Arctic Dreams: “The land is like poetry: it is inexplicably coherent, it is transcendent in its meaning, and it has the power to elevate a consideration of human life.” Well said. Lopez lives in Oregon.

Wild geraniums finish their explosions of blooms and form seeds, with a tiny insect applauding the performance.

Wild coffee shows tiny reddish-brown flowers, ready to open.

A few blooms of American vetch splash the grasses with magenta…

…while the new buds of pale beardtongue dip and sway, ghost-like in the breeze.

Have you been to the prairie yet this month? No? Go!

You won’t want to miss the flower-filled, dazzling days of May.

Edwin Way Teale (1899-1980) , whose quote opens this essay, was born in Joliet, IL. He is best known for “The American Seasons;” four books chronicling his trips across the U.S. His book, Near Horizons (1943), won the John Burroughs medal for natural history writing.

Need convinced? Hike the prairie and prairie savanna on a fine spring day in May and look for flashes of white. Among the blooms, you might see…

…the small white lady’s slipper orchids. After the seeds germinate, it takes almost a dozen years for the plant to produce flowers. No instant gratification here… but it’s worth the wait, isn’t it?

Frequent pollinators include this halictine bee. Almost as beautiful as the bloom.

Common valerian looks anything but common. The blooms smell like dirty socks, but it appears its antsy visitors don’t mind the scent. As the flowers fade, the stalks turn bright pink. Who knew?

If you hike the prairie savanna nearby, you may stumble on a cluster of large-flowered trillium. Instinctively, you’ll drop to your knees to appreciate them more fully. Wow.

Whoever named “blue-eyed grass” had a sense of humor. It’s not in the grass family (rather, it’s an iris) and this particular species is not blue. Despite its name, this “common blue-eyed grass” is uncommonly beautiful.

I have an affinity for violets, although my neighbors think of them as weedy trespassers. On the prairie, the common white violets line the trails. They rarely venture into the tallgrass arena, where they’d have to duke it out with tougher plants.

Smooth and false Solomon’s seal are starting to bloom in the savanna and in the shadier areas of the prairie. But the real showstopper is starry Solomon’s seal, sprinkled through the grasses.

One of the first prairie plant names I learned was bastard toadflax, which colonizes large areas, dabbing the prairie with dots of white. Its seeds were once a tasty trail snack, when eaten in small amounts, for hungry Native Americans on the move.

Even the lone dandelion that blooms unwelcomed by the trail puts on a colorless, star-like show. Love ’em or hate ’em, the dandelion has its own ethereal beauty as it throws its starred seeds to the wind.

Sure, it’s no lady’s slipper.

But even dandelion seeds take on a bit of bright white glamour on a fine spring day in May. Why not take an hour or two and go see for yourself?

Cindy Crosby

Cindy Crosby is the author, compiler, or contributor to more than 20 books. Her most recent is "The Tallgrass Prairie: An Introduction," (2017 Northwestern University Press). Look for her new book, "Tallgrass Conversations: In Search of the Prairie Spirit" in spring of 2019 (with Thomas Dean, Ice Cube Press). Her writing is also included in "The Tallgrass Prairie Reader" (2014, University of Iowa Press). She teaches prairie ecology, prairie literature, and prairie ethnobotany in the Chicago area, and is a prairie steward who has volunteered countless hours in prairie restoration. See Cindy's upcoming speaking and teaching events at www.CindyCrosby.com.

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